We have been getting nostalgic about tournaments gone by. Ian Watson picks his favourite World Cup moments.
Ian Watson picks out favourite World Cup memories
Anticipation of South Africa 2010 is helping all at Sky Sports through the cold snap as we turn our thoughts to this summer's World Cup.
We have also been getting nostalgic about tournaments gone by and as part of the build-up to this summer's event we asked the skysports.com team to pick their five favourite World Cup moments.
Kicking off the series is
Ian Watson ...
5 - Ronaldo's wink, Portugal v England, Germany 2006
The moment that earned Cristiano Ronaldo his status as the ultimate pantomime villain and that saw almost every England fan instantly forget the failings of their own team and talisman as Sven-Goran Eriksson's much-hyped men again flattered to deceive on the biggest stage.
After Wayne Rooney attempted to perform a vasectomy on Ricardo Carvalho with his left boot, Ronaldo confronted the referee demanding action against his Manchester United team-mate. With Rooney dismissed, Ronaldo was caught on camera winking towards the Portugal bench, leading to outbursts of apoplectic rage in pubs and living rooms across England that carried on right the way into the following Premier League season.
4 - France 0 Senegal 1, Japan/South Korea 2002
As an Englishman in New York at the time, the World Cup opener in 2002 marked the start of a month's worth of early mornings and late nights, as thanks to the time differences, games were televised at either 2am or 7am.
After the first of many pre-dawn raids on the McDonalds at the end of the road for a sportsman's breakfast, my four housemates and I settled down bleary-eyed on the sofa for an opening game the World Cup holders were expected to win comfortably. But in a repeat of what happened in 1990, the World Cup holders badly underestimated an unfancied African side.
The only goal of the game arrived after the slower-than-erosion Frank LeBoeuf was skinned on the left before a laughable mix-up between Fabien Barthez and Emmanuel Petit gave Papa Bouba Dioup a tap-in.
The shock was the first of many as hilariously for any Englishman, the French, Portugal and Argentina all failed to make it beyond the group stages.
3 - Roy Keane v Mick McCarthy 2002
Roy Keane had already threatened to walk-out on the Republic of Ireland once, after their first training session in the Far East, so the ceasefire between himself and Mick McCarthy was never going to last.
After Keane had given an interview to the
Irish Times, criticising the organisation and facilities he and his team-mates were subjected to, things came to a head when McCarthy confronted his skipper in front of the rest of the squad.
Keane is not one to back down when forced into a corner and his character assassination of McCarthy sadly cannot be reproduced. What happened in that meeting not only brought to an end Keane's World Cup, but as Niall Quinn described it, "caused a huge controversy in Irish society".
2 - David Beckham's free-kick v Columbia, France 1998
After dropping David Beckham for the first group game of England's France '98 campaign, Glenn Hoddle disgracefully tried to rid the Manchester United midfielder of what remained of his confidence by hanging him out to dry in front of the press, making Beckham explain the reasons for his axing.
After an expected win against Tunisia and a shock defeat against Romania, Beckham was restored to an England side needing to avoid defeat against Columbia to progress to the knock-out stages. Darren Anderton served up a taste of things to come when he lashed the English ahead, before Beckham bent a sublime 30-yard free-kick over the Columbia wall, leaving Farid Mondragon flapping and flailing as the ball flew into the corner of the net.
It was the only goal scored directly from a free-kick during the entire tournament, with the joy of his first England goal providing the polar opposite of the emotion he was to experience against Argentina a few days later.
1 - Zinedine Zidane - Germany 2006 final v Italy
Zinedine Zidane chose the World Cup final as his last game in professional football, a fitting stage for one of the finest players the planet has ever seen. Only seven minutes in, France's talisman demonstrated to us exactly what we were going to miss.
Having being awarded an early penalty, Zidane went toe-to-toe with Italy stopper Gianluigi Buffon and proceeded to make the world's best keeper look ridiculous. Zizou dinked the ball towards the spot the Buffon had just vacated and looked on as his effort clipped the underside of the bar before bouncing down over the line.
Many players have tried it - and many succeeded - but normally in friendlies, or matches where the contest had long since ended. Very few if any had the cohanes to do it on the biggest stage of all, but that's exactly what made Zidane stand out from the rest during his entire career.
France went on to lose the final on penalties - and I believe Zidane was involved in another incident later on in the game. But it is for his sublime spot-kick that I choose to remember the French genius.
